A special tumble is when you have the pleasure of tumbling a batch of someone else’s stones for them. Batch 48 is a special tumble for a dear friend, Mr John M. His small bag of relatively smooth stones collected from McCracken’s Rest didn’t require tumbling through all of the grit stages so I didn’t mind interrupting Batch 47 to borrow the tumbler for a short while.
John M also, very generously, gave me a rather unusual stone that he found in the very remote Outback, Australia. It “tinks” when other stones hit it and it’s a beautiful orange colour. I thought I would include it in this batch as most of the stones are quite smooth and a bit softer than that it might lose a lot of it’s original size but thankfully it didn’t and it took a polish really well. I was in such a hurry to get this batch tumbled for John that I forgot to take a pre-tumble photo! Sorry about that!
This batch also used the new ceramic media I purchased recently from Ali-Express. I haven’t been that keen on using plastic pellets for a long time as they are not very environmentally friendly plus you have to use dedicated pellets for each grit stage! It is not possible to get the oblong type ceramic media here in New Zealand unfortunately so after a bit of a long wait and some postage the same price as my item, the oblong ceramic pellets finally arrived just in time to use in this batch!
Batch 48: 3lb Tumbler 4
Started at Stage 3: 400grit
Number of Stones: 36
Weight in: 521grams
4 Tbspns of 400grit
1 Tbspn Borax
Ceramic Pellets added
Days Tumbling: 10
Weight out: 445g – loss of 76grams
Stage 4: Polish Mix
Number of Stones: 36
Weight in: 445g
Polish Mix (3rd use): 5 Tbspns of polish mixed with 300mls of clean water. Pellets added.
Days Tumbling:
Weight out: Forgot to weigh!
Stage 5: Burnish
2 Tbspns of borax
48 hours tumbling to complete the polish process.
All the stones looked super smooth with very minimal bruising after Stage 3 (400grit).
I liked the job the ceramic pellets did considering this was a very small load of stones.
I think most of these stones argillite with some banded and some not. There’s the odd stone that isn’t argillite but I’m unsure as to what they might be given I don’t know where they were collected from.
Isn’t that bright orange one gorgeous? It feels super light and still tinks when you tap it! I gave it back to John M with the rest of his stones as a surprise!
Polish Complete
Batch 48 | 3lb Tumbler 4 | McCracken’s Rest, Southland | 24 January 2024 – 17 February 2024
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